• A new study shows that children with contact lenses feel better about their looks than kids who wear glasses. • Horrible news: over 100,000 young women were killed in fires in India in a single year. Officials say that many of these deaths were tied to domestic abuse. • Proposition 8 is back in court. The court's decision is due within 90 days, so here's hoping that the 18,000 same-sex couples wed in California are not forced to give up their rights. • Four years after being honorably discharged, Lisa Pagan, mother of two, was recalled for duty. She reported with her children, and is now waiting to hear whether her appeal - on the grounds that she must stay in the country to take care of her kids - will be approved or not. • According to a study from the University of Warwick, modern women are ill-equipped to deal with motherhood because of their newfound geographical mobility. • New strains of drug-resistant gonorrhea have been detected in the US, UK and Australia. • The kidnapping trial of Kumari Fulbright, former beauty queen, has been pushed back until at least August. • Toward the end of the Spanish Civil War, thousands of children were kidnapped and put up for adoption. Years later, Spain is facing pressure to investigate the "lost children of the Franco regime." • The Belfast Rape Crisis Center is facing harsh criticism for its burlesque show fundraiser. Academic Fionola Meredith is among those opposing the show: "Forget post-feminism and irony - Northern Ireland remains an old-fashioned sexist's paradise where women's rights are very far down the political agenda." • More than 15,000 tapes of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Christian talk show, the 'PTL Club', are up for auction. • Excerpts from Josef Fritzl's psychological examination have been released, and the details are terrifying. Fritzl claims that he "actually led a completely normal family life" and that he was a "good provider." • According to UN officials, the women's prison at Badam Bagh, Afghanistan, is probably the best in the country. The "humane" prison allows children to stay with their mothers, and offers classes for the prisoners in English and computer science. • British teachers worry that forward-facing strollers may be to blame for the recent decline in the linguistic abilities of many children. • Artist Christian Faur assembles amazing portraits entirely out of whole crayons. Check them out here. • A new study has found that sexual dysfunction among women may have more to do with the brain than with the body. • The world's first pink dolphin has been discovered living in an inland lake in Louisiana. • The Japanese have invented a new weight loss tool: expensive toe rings. • Women are less likely to go into debt and work harder for financial independence than men, according to a new study. • Mariachi classes are gaining young followers, as second and third generation Latinos reconnect with music of their grandparents. 14-year-old Maureen Sanchez has been taking Mariachi classes since she was five, and has already recorded three CDs and appeared on national radio and television. • A recent survey shows that women are more religious than men. Analysts speculate that this may be caused by - what else? - motherhood. • For the first time, researchers have established a link between estrogen and fat storage, which may explain why women store fat differently than men. • The New York Times has a short, but important, documentary following an 11-year-old girl on her last day of school before the Taliban closes it down. • 

[Image via Florida Times-Union[

A Pot Psychology Summer: Looking Back At The Things You Never Saw from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

Assuming that UTIs don't count as STDs (even though it's very similar to Chlamydia, since it's just bacteria, right?), my first STD was the herp. God only knows who I caught it from, but I'm pretty sure it was from one of three bartenders from the same bar I was sleeping with at the time. But it also could've been this dude from this band. Or this 22-year-old unemployed skater dude. Or this other unemployed dude who was a friend of a friend. (I know how to pick 'em!) Anyway, I felt a burning when I peed, which wasn't particularly out of the ordinary, especially for back then, when I was seemingly always recovering from chronic UTIs. I ignored it. Then I noticed this like pimple-y blister thing on my right lip. I was like, FUCK, but, heavily in denial, insisting that it might just be an ingrown hair. But when I was reduced to putting homemade ice packs on my vadge to soothe it and unable to sleep through the night because of the pain, I decided to face my fears and looked at my vadge with a hand mirror. The whole thing was inflamed. I made an emergency appointment to see my gyno, who gave me some Zovorax cream, Valtrex (just a week's worth, never do that one-a-day shit 'cause it'll kill your immune system), and some Ambien.

My second STD was Chlamydia. Boring, and easily treatable. Happened about three months after the herp. Then two weeks after that, I got a call from the dude that gave me Chlamydia, to tell me that he had gonorrhea, aka "the clap", aka "the drip." I'd decided that I must've dodged that bullet, but about eight hours after receiving that call, I was squatting over a public toilet and felt something fall out of me and heard a loud thud. I looked down and saw this big, clumpy brownish/yellowish creamy thing on the toilet seat. I called my doctor the next morning and she gave me 500 mg of Cipro and that shit went away right quick. (Seriously, if you're going to get an STD, pray that it's gonorrhea.) Anyway, I took it in stride. I'd already popped my STD cherry with herpes, so everything after that was no biggie. I even made up songs about gonorrhea to the tune of "Make It Clap" by Busta Rhymes featuring Sean John, changing the words to "I got the clap!" And then also, I changed the words of "Da' Dip" by Freak Nasty to "I put my hand up on your hip, when I drip, you drip, we drip."

Earlier: Walt Disney's 'The Story Of Menstruation'

It's not the first time the CDC has warned us about gonorrhea's increasing resistance to antibiotics, however. In 2002 and 2004, Hawaiian, Californian and homosexual gonorrhea carriers were informed their strains were probably too strong for even the anthrax-fighting Cipro. And now, says the Wall Street Journal, the disease has spread to the point that the most disease-resistant city in America is Philadelphia. Having had sex not only in Philly but in California and the Hawaiian Tropic Zone (don't ask), we began to worry: Might we have gonorrhea? After the jump, the [Often disgusting! -Ed.] specifics of our consultation with our resident sex expert, Slut Machine.

Moegetsaround: have you ever had Gonorrhea
slutmachine: yes
Moegetsaround: so apparently it's fast becoming resistant to the longtime standard antibiotic
Moegetsaround: it's joining the list of "superbugs"
slutmachine: i took 500mg of cipro
slutmachine: really?
slutmachine: that's because everyone has it
Moegetsaround: think i do?
Moegetsaround: how would I know
slutmachine: you would know
Moegetsaround: does it smell?
Moegetsaround: I feel like I'm always smelling.
slutmachine: actually, mine morphed from gonorrhea into bacterial vaginosis, so maybe it was resistant to the antibiotics
slutmachine: it drips
slutmachine: actually, it plops
Moegetsaround: Oh, i've totally had bacterial vaginosis
Moegetsaround: it PLOPS?
slutmachine: i remember i was squatting over a toilet to pee and all of sudden i heard this bip plop and there was like a dollop of like really really old sour milk on the toilet seat [That was just fucking unnecessary. -Ed]
Moegetsaround: Wow.
Moegetsaround: Yum.
slutmachine: hahaha
slutmachine: i thought it was a yeast infection, which i've actually never had
Moegetsaround: you've had a yeast infection
Moegetsaround: there is just no fucking way
slutmachine: but then the next morning i got a call from a dude saying he had gonorrhea and he probs gave it to me, which he did
slutmachine: some girls aren't prone to them
slutmachine: i constantly get UTIs
slutmachine: i think that's the trade off
slutmachine: i have UTIs like every fucking week
Moegetsaround: I used to have those
Moegetsaround: I have it all!
slutmachine: it's better now that i've only been sleeping with one person
slutmachine: i may not grow babies, but i grow whole civilizations of bacteria in my vagina!

CDC Pushes New Anti-Gonorrhea Drug [WSJ]